The New CSWE Event at Solidworks World – Part 3 with Mike Puckett

In an effort to keep this site up to date with the latest CSWP news and exam material I reached out to a contact, Mike Puckett, who is a Certificaiton Specialist for Soliworks. In the first two parts of the conversation Mike spoke about the growth of the CSWP and the reason most people take the exams. In addition to enhancing a resume many CSWPs will tell you about the fantastic, and exclusive, event held every year at Solidworks world. Mike was able to share with me some of the specifics of the growth and provide some exclusive details on the new exclusive event.

Mike: We’ll look at it (referring to the Sales data the certification team looks at only occasionally) like “wow look at how many exams we sold” but what we try to do is look at milestones when we get to 50k or 75k exams.3DEngr: What milestones have you hit?Mike: We’re rapidly approaching 75k customer certifications. It’s while over 100k for everyone including VARs. There are over 40k cswas, 25k cswps, and another 1000 CSWEss. You can find that number on the certification center.It took 2.5 years to get to 1k CSWEs, it took almost 5 years to get to that with the original CSWP. The last year has been the biggest growth. Last year at SWW the party for CSWPs was over 900 people. This year we’re doing just CSWEs.The party started as 12 people at a bar, and last year it was 900 people on an aircraft carrier. It’s 1/5th of the SWW attendees that went to our party. In orlando we’re moving to later because so many people came that the partner pavilion was feeling the impact.We were afraid moving it to cswe, what the kickback would be. Most people took it as a challenge though. Saying “I’ll get that by SWW”.It was fun throwing a party for 900 people. But I could see that for the people paying to exhibit in the hall were a bit off put by the size.3DEngr: Is there something going on for this year you can share, what the event is?Mike: I still get excited about it, thinking back to my user days. So we talk about it the year before. April-June we start laying out plans. We just nailed down some decisons. We’re partnering with a toy company. They make iCoasters, it’s like a lego or erector set. There new thing is a Need For Speed thing, and we’ll probably wind up at an indoor karting track, or maybe the Nascar Cafe in Orlando. It’ll be racing themed and we’ll be giving away custom cars. We’re doing some other exclusive things to make it feel like, this is the first cswe event. Not everyone gets invited to it.One last thing I had to ask about, happens to be one of the more popular reasons for visiting this site. People looking to prepare for an exam by taking a practice test.3DEngr: What about sample exams? A see a lot of traffic to 3DEngr.com looking for more sample exams.Mike: All of the exams have a sample available. The only exam we don’t put a sample out for is the CSWE. We don’t develop any more, it’s only available on our site. There are so many resources with youtube and sites like yours (edit: YAY, Unofficial endorsement by Solidworks!) , blogs with information we point people there. It’s surprising we’ll have people contact us who have never been to the Solidworks website, but we feel there is plenty of content available for users to be able to pass the exam.If you want to learn more about the CSWP certification check out all of the other posts here on 3DEngr.com!Check out the rest of my talk with Mike:Part 1: The growth of the Certified Solidoworks Professional certification.Part 2: What benefit the CSWP provides to designers and engineers.Part 3: The New CSWE Event at Solidworks World 2013 in OrlandoThanks to Mike Puckett for his time and insight!

3Dengr shares tips, tools, and techniques for 3D engineers, both experienced professionals and new hobbyists. We offer reviews, articles, and tutorials for 3D printers, 3D printing accessories, and 3D CAD software applications. This site is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We try to link the specific 3d printer models listed in our articles to the Amazon listing for more detail. If this site is helpful to you please support us by just clicking through an Amazon link from our site the next time you buy the best 3D printer or supplies for you after you’ve done your research. Our site will earn a small percentage of the sale on Amazon when it comes from our site. It’s how the associate program works and we appreciate your support of the site!